De extra's
2013
Book, 20 x 12,5 cm, 117 p., language : Dutch, publisher : EPO, Berchem, ISBN : 978 94 91297 54 0.
Materials: ink, paper
Collection: Collection M HKA, Antwerp (Inv. no. B 2027/667).
Literary synopsis
A photographer lands up on a film set in Bollywood. He wants to photograph décors as part of his PhD research in the arts. Posing as an extra, he infiltrates the set of “Tezz”, a romantic terrorist film. But nothing goes as the photographer had imagined. In amongst thirty other extras, he winds up on the least photogenic décor. During the long day’s shoot he enters various conversations about photography and society, with the overpopulated and poverty-stricken Mumbai and its Bollywood surrealism featuring as the backdrop.
Relation of the novel to the artist’s practice
The novel was one of the end results of the PhD in arts which Bert Danckaert defended in 2014. The Extras is about how doubt and incapacity drive the artistic process. It’s also a reflection on the oeuvre of photographers working along the boundaries between fiction and reality in a globalized world in which it’s increasingly difficult to take a clear position (or photographic point of view).
Authorship: Artist Author.
Creative Strategy: Artwork-Novel Parallel Lives.
Genre: Autobiography.
Publishing: Publishing House.
Theme: Frustration, Global Commons, Identity, Photography, Post-Humanism, Socio-Political Critic, States of the Self, Subjective Experience, Travels, Vicarious Experiences.
